The ABCs of OPTs
A Tactical Officer's thoughts on
Star Wars Online Gaming
by Scott (A'Kula) Schimmels
After my last article, I'm sure there are many XvT/BoP pilots who were thinking "Hmmm. I've won all the missions, melees, battles, campaigns.... what else is there to XvT (besided multiplayer)?". Well.... I'm glad you asked me! X-Wing vs TIE Fighter (XvT) was (and is) a great space sim game. It allows the pilot to truly work on his/her dogfighting (d/f) skills against a worthy opponent. However, as many articles, message board threads, and chat rooms have pointed out, XvT lost some of THE AURA that the original X-Wing CD and TIE Fighter CD games had brought with them, mainly the feeling that you were part of the Rebellion (or the Empire), strapping on your X-Wing (or TIE Interceptor) and joining Luke, Wedge (or Baron Fel) and doing battle. The Balance of Power (BoP) expansion set brought back some of that with the campaign series. In addition, BoP reversed the issue of no B-Wing for the Rebels, and introduced the awesome Super Star Destroyer (SSD).
The question to be answered by this article is: How can one take the game beyond the XvT/BoP? The answer lies in understanding how XvT/BoP creates those wonderful three-dimensional objects (fighters, capital ships, transports, platforms, mines, probes, etc) and adding to the numerous objects available in the current XvT/BoP set. In other words, one must understand the ABCs of OPTs.
OPT Basics:
Of course, we must start of with some definitions and introduce you to some of the
concepts of 3D gaming and, in particular, the OPTs of XvT/BoP.
OPTs: these are the model files which store the 3D wireframe graphics and textures of all the crafts and 3D objects in the game. This is currently an area of high interest for XvT/BoP editing and most of this activity is centered at Datamaster's site as part of the OPT Project. I'll come back to this in a little bit. The gist of the OPT Project, and the OPT editing, is this will allow you to add new types of crafts to your gaming experience. But for now, some OPT Basics:
- A ship (model) is made up of what we prefer to call meshes. A simple ship like a container or an asteroid will only have one mesh. Something larger or more complex (like a capital ship) many have many. For instance, the OPT for the SSD has up to 47 meshes.
- A mesh is normally something like a turret or the bridge section of the corvette. These are larger parts that, when combined, give the ship it`s shape.
- In the mesh are faces you could sort of consider then like walls. A turret, for example, has something like 12 faces which define the shape of the turret. If you look at one closely, you will see it has a bunch of flat faces. Each of these being the individual faces in the mesh.
- The faces are made from even smaller parts, which there can be many of, called vertices. The vertices describe a point in 3d space.
- To make a face you define several of these points (vertices) and draw lines between them to form what is known as a wire frame view. If you apply a picture (texture) to this face it would resemble a small piece of your ship.
- There is two kinds of faces used in an OPT, a QUADRANGLE or a TRIANGLE. The quadrangle (quad) uses four vertices to describe it`s shape and the triangle (tri) uses 3 vertices to describe it`s shape - hence their names.
- An OPT uses a bunch of vertices to form some shapes, storing this information in FACE LISTS. These are just lists of either 4 or 3 numbers to describe which vertices to use. The faces are part of a large piece the mesh and a few mesh(s) are combined to form the shape of the ship.
- OPT files are located in the IVFILES directory of both BoP and XvT. BoP has OP1 files, but as far as I can tell, the format are the same.
- Below is a list of OPT files that are stored in the IVFILES, and the associated slot each OPT is assigned to
within ZT executable.
Slot Name OPT file 1 X-Wing XWING.OPT 2 Y-Wing YWING.OPT 3 A-Wing AWING.OPT 4 B-Wing BWING.OPT 5 TIE Fighter TIEFTR.OPT 6 TIE Interceptor TIEINT.OPT 7 TIE Bomber TIEBMB.OPT 8 TIE Advanced TIEADV.OPT 9 TIE Defender TIEDEL.OPT 10 TIE New1 "None" 11 TIE New2 "None" 12 Missile boat MISLBOAT.OPT 13 T-Wing FGHTA.OPT 14 Z-95 Headhunter Z-95.OPT 15 R-41 FGHTB.OPT 16 Xg-1 Assault Gunboat ASSAULT.OPT 17 Lambda class shuttle SHUTTLE.OPT 18 Escort Shuttle SHUTB.OPT 19 System Patrol Craft PATRL.OPT 20 Scout Patrol Craft PATRLB.OPT 21 Stromtrooper transport TRNSPRT.OPT 22 Assault transport TRANSB.OPT 23 Escort transport ESCTRP.OPT 24 Utility TUG TUG.OPT 25 Combat Utility Vehicle UTILA.OPT 26 Container A CONTAIN.OPT 27 Container B CONA.OPT 28 Container C CONB.OPT 29 Container D CONC.OPT 30 Heavy lifter BARGE.OPT 31 Container Transport FRTC.OPT 32 Bulk freighter FREIGHT.OPT 33 Cargo ferry FRTB.OPT 34 Modular conveyor FRTA.OPT 35 Container transporter . 36 Rebel Medium transporter REBTUNA.OPT 37 Muurian transport LTFRTA.OPT 38 YT-1300 Corellian trasnport CORTN.OPT 39 Millenium Falcon None, but defaults to CORTN.OPT 40 Corellian Corvette CORV.OPT 41 Modified Corellian Corvette CORVTA.OPT 42 Nebulon-B Frigate NEB.OPT 43 Nebulon B-2 Frigate FRIGA.OPT 44 C-3 Passenger Liner PASNGR.OPT 45 Carrack Cruiser CRUSA.OPT 46 Strike Cruiser CRUSB.OPT 47 Escort Carrier ESCRT.OPT 48 Dreadnought DREAD.OPT 49 MC80a Calamari cruiser CAL.OPT 50 MC40a Light Calamari Cruiser LTCAL.OPT 51 Interdictor Im-418 INTERD.OPT 52 Victory class Star Destroyer VSD.OPT 53 Imperial Star Destroyer ISD.OPT 54 Super Star Destroyer SSD.OPT 55 Container E COND.OPT 56 Container F CONE.OPT 57 Container G CONF.OPT 58 Container H CONG.OPT 59 Container I CONH.OPT 60 XQ1 Platform PLATA.OPT 61 XQ2 Platform PLATB.OPT 62 XQ3 Platform PLATC.OPT 63 XQ4 Platform PLATAB.OPT 64 XQ5 Platform PLATBA.OPT 65 XQ6 Platform PLATCA.OPT 66 Asteroid Hangar ASTH44.OPT 67 Asteroid laser battery ASTG33.OPT 68 Asteroid warhead launcher ASTW21.OPT 69 Deep space manufactor factory FACTRY.OPT 70 Shipyard SHIPYARD.OPT 71 Repair yard REPAIRYD.OPT 72 Gun emplacement GUNPLAT.OPT 73 Modified strike cruiser CRUSC.OPT
I feel I am compelled to mention a few things here. The ZT executable in XvT/BoP is
hardwired to the 73 slots. This means no one has been able to figure out how to add more
slots to the game. As such, to add a new ship, you will most likely have to replace an
existing OPT with the one you want to add. The following slots were unused by XvT, as
these ships have not been implemented when XvT was released.
Slot Name OPT file 9 TIE Defender TIEDEL.OPT 10 TIE New1 "None" but defaults to TIEADV.OPT 11 TIE New2 "None" 12 Missile boat MISLBOAT.OPT 20 Scout Patrol Craft PATRLB.OPT 31 Container Transport FRTC.OPT 39 Millenium Falcon None, but defaults to CORTN.OPT 44 C-3 Passenger Liner PASNGR.OPT 45 Carrack Cruiser CRUSA.OPT
For BoP, only two slots are unused, but no one has been able to figure out how to load an
OPT into them, and have that OPT function.
Slot Name OPT file 10 TIE NEW1 "None" but defaults to TIEADV.OPT 11 TIE NEW2 "None"
Finally, there has been discussion at the OPT Project regarding infringement on LucasArts copyright laws. Let me spell it out as clearly as possible here:- You may not distribute ANY of the OPTs from X-Wing vs TIE Fighter (XvT), Balance of Power (BoP) or the X-Wing Collector Series (XWCS). So, unless you own each game personally, you cannot take the OPT from one game, and port it into another. Nor can you GIVE any OPTs (most desired have been the missile boat and TIE Defender OPTs) to anyone who doesn't own the appropriate copy.
- Creation of new OPTs does not infringe either. As long as they do not appear similar to any of the OPTs created for XvT, BoP or XWCS, and you do not SELL your modified OPTs for any profit.